(Jerry Van Amerongen’s Ballard Street via GoComics.com)
Mr. Charles P. Pierce at Esquire reminds us why Mitt Romney is unemployable:
… It’s becoming abundantly clear that, all Santorum aside, this election is fundamentally going to be about class. The Republicans already have talked about blue-collar jobs and middle-class anxiety more in this cycle than they have in the previous two or three combined. And, even if the Republicans had given the whole business a good leaving-alone, the White House is going to force the issue anyway. Unemployment is not going to drop below eight percent before the election. The income gap is not going to go away, either. The basic inequities forced on the country by the looting of the economy in the first decade of the century are alive and well. They are going to bite hard at both parties. But only one candidate is so uniquely vulnerable to their political effects.
__
Let us be absolutely sure of one thing: Willard Romney could have been functionally unemployed for his entire life and not known there was any other way to live. He no more knows the existential dread that people feel in this economy than he knows what a boot feels like when it steps on an ant. The job that made him spectacularly wealthy, as opposed to simply rich, involved exploiting that existential dread for profit, and for the benefit of investors just as heedless of it as he is. I don’t know why his campaign insists on trotting him out as the great friend of the embattled middle-class. They might as well just dress him up as a chicken and send him out to talk about agricultural policy. I suspect, though, it just might have a little something to do with the Occupy people who, as we all know, have no coherent agenda that anyone can identify.
Speaking of couch potatoes with feral fantasies, are they still telecasting football on Monday evenings?
Mark S.
Yeah, there’s a little game on tonight.
Raven
@Mark S.:Sheesh.
South of I-10
@Mark S.: Beat me to it!
Mino
What a scroungy mutt! He actually looks like he could catch something. Actually, he looks like he did and it fought back.
Raven
Don’t poison our tiger!
Hill Dweller
New CBS poll: Romney 47 Obama 45, Obama 46 Paul 45, Obama 47 Santorum 43
CarolDuhart2
Can I announce that my website is finally finished? It’s taken several turns over the last 5 years, but except for backend work like Adsense working with Google Analysis, etc, it’s done. I can use some participation and feedback
Aquariusmoon’s Eclectic Site
Baud
@Mark S.: John is still catatonic about Tebow. We may not see football on this blog for a while.
jl
My very careful and nit picky concern troll analysis of
“He no more knows the existential dread that people feel in this economy than he knows what a boot feels like when it steps on an ant.”
sez Pierce is wrong.
If one is wearing the boot, one knows how it feels.
Pierce has deficient empathy and should apologize to Mitt.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark S.:
Some minor contest between a couple of oversized day care centers.
Raven
@Baud: We may not see a football thread but that doesn’t mean we can’t hijack this motherfucker.
Baud
@Raven: Heh. Readership capture, indeed.
JGabriel
Charles Pierce:
Minor correction to rare Charles Pierce understatement.
.
Hill Dweller
Brent Musburger is awful.
Raven
Football thread up, he has risen. All you twinkies stay right here.
jl
Yahoo sports has some gobbledygook about ALA and LSU in BCS.
Sorry, I can’t get excited about the Acronym Bowl (unless you can use them in Scrabble)
Mnemosyne
I think my cats fantasize every night that they personally killed the food I put in their bowls. That’s why Annie does her little head-shake to break the mouse’s neck after taking a bite.
I love my cats, but their predatory instincts kinda freak me out sometimes.
JGabriel
Man On Dog shows the common touch:
FlipYrWhig
@JGabriel: You forget “Joe the Plumber” and the many [Name] the [Trade] avatars that followed. Then again, those were blue collar jobs redefined as woulda-been rich entrepreneurs being kept down by the socia1ist jackboot of redistribution. But for Republicans that’s what you call advanced class consciousness.
JGabriel
FlipYrWhig:
That was just one non-candidate. Today, we have six Republican candidates pretending to care about the working class.
.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolDuhart2:
Carol, what I can see looks like something I’d like to explore further, but I’m reading it on an iPad2 and I’m sorry to say the formatting is all funky. Maybe it’s a problem with this specific device. Maybe it’s just a temporary glitch and will sort out by itself; maybe it means more tweaking on your end. Anyhow, i’ll return to the site next time I’m using my desktop puter and give you any feedback that might be helpful.
Regardless of content and formatting funkitude and anything else, I’m just impressed that you have put together what seems like a fairly complex blog compendium on many different topics. Congratulations, that’s very inspiring to the likes of me.
Calouste
Well, it seems like the GOP primaries have inspired someone: Eric Cantona wants to be the next president of France
In the sense that Eric realized that lack of experience and competence is not an obstacle to running for president.
Schlemizel
I heard something about some important game being played by a bunch of boys destroying their bodies without pay (at least not above the table). Its probably important to some people who see some connection to the location of the the institutions involved.
burnspbesq
This is the next big civil liberties case that will probably end up at the Supreme Court.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2012/01/the-government-responds-to-redacted/
CarolDuhart2
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks. It could be that since I don’t really know how to make a site compatible with mobile devices, which an Ipad is. It’s basic WordPress, and the same theme throughout.
Thanks for the compliments, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@CarolDuhart2: I got far enough into one link to discover (to my chagrin) that Ron Paul and I both have Sun in Leo and Moon in Taurus. I really would prefer to have as little as possible in common with him :-)
DanielX
Haven’t bothered to watch football this evening. Instead, we’ve been amusing ourselves by indulging the felines in substance abuse. First catnip, with the usual wallowing in it and then doing 360s (well, 270s) all over the kitchen floor. Then once they were semi-comatose, trying out a product called Kitty Kaviar…which consists of dried bonito tuna in a sort of flaked form. As was once remarked about another product, a little dab’ll do ya. Tends to produce an immediate reaction, as in “give it to me, give it to me, I want it NOW!”, complete with standing on hind legs and grabbing with both paws. This from mature cats (5 and 14 years). Heartily recommended for treats and amusement, though you don’t want to give much – too much concentrated protein.
CarolDuhart2
@SiubhanDuinne: It takes more than that to make you like Ron Paul. (really, unless you are 76 years old).
+i
burnspbesq
Pierce’s work for Grantland.com is much better than anything he does for Esquire.
Amir Khalid
@Calouste:
Eric Cantona for President? I got his campaign song right here.